Kristian and Christian

Can a visit to a Propellerhead Software Producers Conference be a tipping point for your career? For Swedish techno duo Kristian & Christian this was certainly the case.

“We came to the Producers conference for feedback and left with a record deal”

They attended the Producer Seminar co-hosted by Propellerhead Software and Studio magazine in Stockholm last November and played their music in one of the Production Workshops led by electronica artist Andreas Tilliander.

The duo's first release is now available on Seattle based label Kupei Musika.

The Sound of Kristian & Christian

We asked Kristian & Christian what's in their Reason Rack and how they create their sound. They did the only sensible thing and created a song to be used as an example. Here's what they say:
The track 'Snus' dissected

Redrum

When we create and select drum sounds, they usually come with a pretty sharp attack and we usually shorten some of the drum to get a clean and nice sound. We also pitch some of the sounds to make them fit better in the mix. We usually start making the drum as patterns and then use the 'copy to track' function to create fills and variations for transitions in the song.

Subtractor

We love the Subtractor. In fact, all parts in this song except the drums were created with the Subtractor.

The lead chord with it's House music feel is fed through Reason's CH-101 Chorus/Flanger with a hefty amount of negative feedback. It's in bypass most of the song but is switched on in select places to add a little surreal/metallic feeling. We have also automated the Subtractor filter and the dry/wet setting of the RV7000 that it's fed through. We use an Oxygen 8 controller when doing the automation since it gives us a better hands-on feeling than drawing the automation or using the mouse.

The rest of the Subtractor sounds are not automated. They carry out their modulation duties using LFOs only. Some of them are slightly detuned to sound less perfect and a few of them are also playing dry without effects to make them stick out a little.

Dr.Rex

We took a rex file from the factory sound bank's Chemical Beats section to add a little break beat feel to it. It had a different groove from the rest of the track so we quantized the loop using the track's shuffle setting.

Fills

Most of our fill usually have a synth in them to accentuate that there is something happening. In this track, we used a Subtractor (on the Effect Sweep track) fed through hall reverb and the RV7000 echo to create room and atmosphere. We also automated the pan in the mixer on the fill effect.

Arrangement

Our songs usually start as a couple of 8 or 16 bar loops that we then flesh out with fills, variations and breakdowns when we arrange the track. This is a short example track only. In a full length track we would have let that breakdown before the end loop go on much longer.